Daily Archives: March 6, 2019

Vox: “…A 2014 report by the Public Interest Research Groups [PIRG] found that two-thirds of surveyed students had skipped buying or renting some of their required course materials because they couldn’t afford them.Textbook publishers, for their part, have begun acknowledging that textbooks and other course materials have become so expensive that some students simply can’t afford them, even if it means their grades will suffer as a result. Publishers claim that new technologies, like digital textbooks and Netflix-style subscription services, make textbooks more affordable for all. But affordability advocates say that if anyone is to blame for the fact that textbook costs have risen more than 1,000 percent since the 1970s, it’s the publishers — and, advocates claim, these new technologies are publishers’ attempt to maintain their stranglehold on the industry while disguising it as reform…Textbook costs increased 88 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to the BLS report. The College Board suggests that students set aside $1,200 each year for books and other course materials, which can be an exorbitant amount of money for students who come from low-income backgrounds.

… Four major publishers — Pearson, Cengage, Wiley, and McGraw-Hill — control more than 80 percent of the market, according to a 2016 PIRG report [see the 2018 report here]. Major publishers also tend to “avoid publishing books in subject areas where their competitors have found success,” which ends up limiting professors’ options for what to assign…”

The New York Law Journal: “The New York City Legal Aid Society has released a searchable database of federal lawsuits brought against New York City police, which it said could arm plaintiffs attorneys with crucial information for their own civil rights suits. The database, called CAPstat, contains more than 2,350 lawsuits filed from January 2015… Continue Reading

“The global economy is slowing and major risks persist, with growth weakening much more than expected in Europe, according to the OECD’s latest Interim Economic Outlook. Economic prospects are now weaker in nearly all G20 countries than previously anticipated. Vulnerabilities stemming from China and the weakening European economy, combined with a slowdown in trade and… Continue Reading

Harvard Business Review: “…The first problem with feedback is that humans are unreliable raters of other humans. Over the past 40 years psychometricians have shown in study after study that people don’t have the objectivity to hold in their heads a stable definition of an abstract quality, such as business acumen or assertiveness, and then… Continue Reading

BBC: “Researchers from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) in Suffolk used data captured from microphones placed on the seabed to identify “hotspots”. Dr Nathan Merchant, from Cefas, said he was “concerned” about potential effects on how marine mammals “communicate”. The shipping industry said it took its responsibilities to nature “seriously”. Over… Continue Reading

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Sabrina is also the solo Editor, Publisher and Founder of LLRX.com® – Legal, technology and knowledge discovery resources on the “moving edge” for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academic and Public Interest Communities – launched in 1996.